Monday, August 23, 2010

Home Improvements

An old saying goes something along the lines of he who owns a home is always coming out of a hardware store. How incredibly true that is!

Since moving into the new house, we haven't gone crazy, but we've gotten some stuff done here and there.

Old Fridge

First was the fridge. The one that came with the house was pretty small (maybe 3/4 size?) and didn't have a lot of shelves or drawers. You can see by the photo that it didn't even fill the space that was available. Please also note that the wine bottles are decorative and were accumulated over time :) So I posted it up on craigslist and got it the heck out.

New Fridge

Also from craigslist, we got a new (to us) fridge. We watched the average price and waited for just the right deal. The fridge we got needed a little work from a service man but when you put the upfront cost together with the cost of the service call, as well as the money we got from the old fridge, we were still quite happy with the deal we got. The new fridge was an off-white color (the color that the handles are in the photo) and we really wanted it to be white. So we got some appliance paint from Lowes and went to town on that bad boy. I was quite pleased with the turn out!

Before

After

You may have noticed in picture of the new fridge above that the cabinet above is missing. We decided to move that over the stove so that we could hang a new microwave under it. This was quite a project actually and we learned a lot. But in the end, we're very happy with it and it is nice having a microwave that doesn't take up extra counter space. You can't tell but this project came

complete with learning how to install a new outlet (located inside the cabinet) for the microwave.

A simple but very useful project is pictured below. It doesn't look like much but it is a compost bin. There are lots of expensive and complicated bins out there but, given the simplicity of this one, no one who has space for one has a reason for not having one, using this model. The one thing I still want to do is cut a large hole in the plywood cover and install some small-hole chicken wire so that the compost can breathe better. All in good time.

Compost Bin

The other project worth mentioning is the dog door. We had one in the house we lived in before that and I think we (and the dogs) were spoiled by it. So we got one and went through the hassle of switching doors around, cutting a hole in the door, etc. But it was well worth it.

Lucy coming in from the porch

It should also be noted that, in addition to house projects, Leni has gotten lots done down in the garage. I won't even pretend to know what all of it is but he spends time down there and every time I peak in, he seems to be happily busy.